Key Moment for Skid Row’s Future

The future of the LAPD’s crackdown on crime on downtown’s skid row could be decided Monday as city officials and the American Civil Liberties Union go before a federal mediator in an attempt to resolve a lawsuit that some blame for stalling the city’s efforts.

With statistics showing the number of homeless encampments rising and arrests declining on skid row, there is a growing consensus that the mediation marks a do-or-die moment in the city’s much-discussed effort to clean up the area.

“I think the future of skid row hinges on it,” said Ruth Schwartz, founder and executive director of Shelter Partnership, a nonprofit organization based downtown.

The court-ordered, closed-door session is designed to forge a compromise between the city and the ACLU, which filed suit three years ago to prevent the LAPD from arresting homeless people for camping on sidewalks. In April, a federal appeals court ruled in the ACLU’s favor, creating division among city leaders on an issue that they had vowed to tackle with a united front.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a former board member and past president of the ACLU of Southern California, has said he thinks the city should not appeal the lawsuit and should instead find other ways to police the streets of downtown.

But Police Chief William J. Bratton and City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo vowed to fight the suit, saying it would be difficult to clean up skid row otherwise. Several people familiar with the case said these differing views have created tension and made the city’s position on the court decision harder to ascertain.

The LAPD is seeking the ability to remove homeless camps during the day and night. But the ACLU has balked, accusing Bratton of using the lawsuit as a scapegoat when the real problem is a lack of police officers. Sources close to the negotiations said the mediation so far has been heated.

For his part, Bratton said he won’t send more officers into downtown until the issue is resolved.

When Bratton arrived in L.A. four years ago, he vowed to clean up the streets using the same “broken windows” policing style he employed to clean up Times Square in New York in the early 1990s. But he has complained that the ACLU suit, along with a prohibition on “cite and release arrests,” has stymied his efforts and resulted in a plunge in downtown arrests.

“Everything is at stake,” LAPD Capt. Andrew Smith, the head of the department’s downtown division, said earlier this week. “It is not a safer-cities initiative if you don’t have the tools to work with. We can put in better lights, cameras and clean up the place, but our officers -- as Chief Bratton has said -- need a tool to work with.”

Villaraigosa, for his part, said Friday that the parties are “pretty close” to negotiating a settlement that “addresses the fact that [in] the last few months since the decision was given, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of camps.”

But he said officials aren’t about to roust people unless they are engaged in criminal activity. “None of us are calling for police action to enforce ... provisions other than criminal provisions, like people, you know, engaging in drug dealing, engaging in prostitution, preying on the homeless,” he said.

Several downtown service providers openly chastise all sides in the ongoing negotiations, saying vitriolic discussions about the suit have prevented both sides from grappling with more serious issues that plague skid row.

They say efforts to improve the district have focused too narrowly on public safety and policing, rather than including issues such as housing, supportive services and moving homeless services out of downtown. And they say other battles, such as the one brewing over the future of the city-county Homeless Services Authority, which oversees the distribution of millions of dollars in federal funding to local agencies, are not getting proper attention from city leaders.

“We’ve invested a lot of energy and resources into this one item,” said Orlando Ward, director of public affairs at the Midnight Mission, located on skid row. “And the streets are continuing to deteriorate. Come hell or high water, positive or negative, we still need a plan to deal with the lawlessness and the violence and the real health concerns we have on our streets.”

Alice Callaghan of Las Familias del Pueblo, an advocacy group for the homeless, said the discussion about how the police conduct their work on skid row would be taking place even if the ACLU had not sued.

“The police have made it a feud between the ACLU and themselves,” she said, “and done it in a very unfair way.”

As negotiations move forward, questions have been raised about who in the end decides whether -- and under what terms -- the city will settle. The mayor’s staff as well as the LAPD insist that the city attorney’s office serves a client, although whether that is the mayor or the Police Department is in dispute. The city attorney’s position is that as an elected official, he must do what is best for the city and its people.

One point on which the police, city officials and others have disagreed is the nature of the city ordinance, known as 41.18(d), at issue in the ACLU case.

The law prohibits people from sitting, lying or sleeping on public sidewalks. The ACLU challenged implementation of the ordinance during nighttime hours, and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.

Judge Kim Wardlaw, who wrote the majority decision, said that because there were not adequate shelter beds to accommodate all of the city’s estimated 48,000 homeless, such enforcement was a violation of the 8th Amendment, which bars cruel and unusual punishment.

Before the court decision, police used the ordinance mostly during the day, allowing people to sleep in tents or on the streets at night as long as they were packed up by morning. But in the wake of the ruling, officers are not enforcing the ordinance at any hour.

Police officials have said they interpreted the decision to mean they are blocked from rousting people during the day or night.

But some sources report that the city attorney has said the ordinance could be enforced during the day and that a final settlement will make a determination on the issue.

In recent weeks, a growing number of tents and cardboard sidewalk dwellings have appeared in other parts of downtown, outside skid row.

On Friday, police officers wearing rubber gloves could be seen removing the structures -- but not the people -- from an area just north of the U.S. District Court on Spring Street.

“We are working with street maintenance to make sure the sidewalks are clear there,” said the LAPD’s Smith.